California Love

In the wake of the Vergara decision regarding teacher tenure, there has been an explosion of commentary both positive and negative. Some are ready to pour dirt on the entirety of teacher tenure.  Others see the decision as a slap in the face of teachers across the country and as another “nail in the coffin” for due process.  Of course, I see it through a third lens.

Back in 2005, which seems like a long time in terms of education policy/politics, then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed on the November ballot an initiative called Proposition 74.  In short, that Proposition advanced the notion that, god forbid, teacher’s be given five years to receive tenure instead of the extremely short window of only two years.  At the time, in my own District, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), as well as the California Teachers Association all worked vehemently to defeat this proposition.  They felt it was a slap in face of, you guessed it, due process.  While at the same time people want to engage in historical amnesia concerning this Proposition, they are also failing to advance their own best interest.

If Prop. 74 had passed, both the public and the politicians would have seen the measure as a step in the right direction of teachers understanding the need for more rigor in the tenure process.  Oftentimes, both the perception and the reality is a war of attrition.  Sit in one spot for 2 years (with perhaps 2-3 walk-through's from administrators) and poof, you’re fully tenured.  I understand that there should be more to it, but oftentimes it is not. Let’s be clear, 95% or more of the teaching population is doing the right thing, but that 5% is anchoring us down.

 

I believe in acknowledging the hard work of teachers who show up for work every day, ready and able to fight the good fight and advocate for their students.  As I used to say when I was a high school classroom teacher, “its not the kids who (mess) up my day, it’s the adults.”  With that in mind let me direct my focus to the adults who insist on acting like the children they teach. Rather than engaging in the reflective discourse of what can be done to improve the profession, people have engaged in the dangerous slope of arguing in absolutes.  Either you agree with tenure or you don’t.  Of course, the “truth” lies somewhere in between both extremes.

Highlighting the FACT that there are an extremely small number of teachers who do not do right by their students is not an indictment on ALL teachers who are in the classroom.  Let me say it another way, if you do the right thing, participating in education groups on social media, grading papers, showing up to work early/leaving late, lobbying for better educational reforms, and in many cases raising your own children, no friend, I am not talking about you.  I am talking about those who languish in the darkness, or sometimes right in front of us, and insist on doing the bare minimum or worse. What is abhorrent is that we as the "good" ones do not shed light on those who need help, or assistance (see: No Snitching from 3-5-12)

It seems as if everyone has a story about a teacher - positively and negatively.  Let me highlight why I believe that teacher tenure needs significant reform.  Without going into great detail (to protect the guilty), a “colleague” of mine in South Central, earned his Ph.D online while he was supposed to be “teaching” his class.  Why does this matter?  Well for obvious reasons of doing ones job, but personally his students would come to my classroom crying begging to be in my already overcrowded class.  How could I say no? Real talk.  Is he an aberration? Absolutely.  But he's not alone. Let’s have an honest, truthful discussion. There may not be anyone as bold, or in my mind abusive, as he was, but there are folk who try to “get over” in every profession.  To deny otherwise is simply weakening our argument that this profession should be view as a top-tier profession.

So rather than continue to rant and point fingers, here are 4 things we can and should do to reclaim the tenure discourse:

1. Increase the number of years from 2 years to 4 or 5 years.
2. In addition to the administrators “observations,” there should be bi-annual meetings with a consortium of parents, teachers, students (if 6-12^th grade) and other stakeholders.  Teaching is not just what you do in the classroom, it is how you affect and interact with the school community as well.
3. There has to be some evidence of academic growth, either through Professional Development credits or attendance at academic conferences.
4. As a part of tenure, the portfolio of the evaluation should include; a written component by the teacher, 2-3 letters of recommendation (including the department chair), a written evaluation by an administrator, and some sort of statistical evidence of student growth (not just test scores).

These are just a few of the ways teachers can “take back” the narrative surrounding teacher tenure.  K-12 tenure is not as rigorous a process as the tenure process at the higher education level, nor should it be.  But these four ideas help towards alleviating the misconception that once teachers receive tenure that they become like my former colleague, inept and lazy. 

Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever…A Change That Never Came

As my first post-doc post, I want to throw my hat into the ring regarding the 60^th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education of Topeka KS (1954).  "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."  Those words spoken by the newly inaugurated Governor Wallace of Alabama in 1963 could not ring more true today.  However, those who are...articulating a false narrative concerning “resegregation” or lamenting that charters or other school reforms equal the “new segregation” are misrepresenting history.

Let me be as explicit as I have ever been about anything…In regards to local public high schools, School segregation NEVER took place.  Let me say that again, school segregation, as intended by Brown NEVER took place in the United States of America.

What did happen?

In the North, and places where there is more than one local high school, we have seen very few instances of positive examples of integration in America.  What occurred is that in areas where school buildings were integrated, much of the population of White students were placed into honors or advanced placement courses and Black and Brown students were placed in remedial courses and vocational education courses.  From the early 1960s until it became a policy non grata, segregation within the school building was primarily done through tracking and other tactical means of keeping “those students” away from their white counterparts. 

Another example of what happened was that in the wake of Brown, especially in the cities with strong ethnic neighborhoods such as Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, white flight occurred.  The feeling was, you want to integrate the school, fine, I’m moving to the suburbs. In response, school districts tried to “force” integration by demanding students be bused from one school to another [see Eyes on the Prize volume 2 regarding South Boston v Roxbury, 1974].  This vain attempt to integrate schools beyond neighborhood boundaries was extremely problematic and even dangerous as the first and second wave of integration took place post-Brown. The resentment from this failed attempt could arguably be considered to still be prevalent today.

Why is this historical recollection important?  It is important, no, essential, because without the knowledge of the historical events which occurred in the wake of the historic Brown decision there is a tendency to fall prey to the false narrative that Brown integrated schools and even worse, that racial “progress” that was made in those years, has dissipated and we are now fraught with segregated schools, some worse than before the momentous decision.

I have argued that the Brown decision did more to integrate every other aspect of American life EXCEPT public education for a long time.  That statement is usually met with disdain or contempt.  But let’s look at the realities of our surroundings.  As long as we cannot force people to live in integrated communities, and as long as cities previously mentioned and others, want to insist on the antiquated notion of “local, neighborhood schools” we are going to be fraught with racial (and class) isolationism. 

Hence scholars and pundits who wish to use the term “resegregation” or segregation do so knowing it is a loaded term filled with visions of women and men spitting, hitting and cursing young Black boys and girls on their way to enter the school house gates.  It is a term which denotes racial animus, and legal and moral acceptance of the purposeful separation of the races.  It is a term which hearkens back to a day when people such as Ruby Bridges and others were constantly under death threats because of their social justice actions.  It is a term which has zero place in the discourse surrounding public education today, except in the context of trying to create hyperbole and misrepresent the current educational landscape. It is also grounded in the notion that segregation has been used as a mechanism of inequality, and that integration should not be the goal in and of itself.  Instead, we should aim towards dismantling the systems which have created racial and class-based inequality in too many areas of this country for decades if not centuries. Thus I cannot see how we, knowing the history, can continue to use this term to describe the current state of public education. 

In his work, Freeden Oeur who focuses on single-sex schools, notes that separation does not always equal segregation.  Further, it seems to me as if it those who insist on using the term to articulate today’s public school backdrop are using the term to incite the public into action.  The question is what action, and at what costs?

The way I see it, it is unfortunate that many progressives are coming from a position in which their implicit bias is that if it is Black (or Brown) it is wrong.  Very rarely is this notion is expressed explicitly , but usually this “truth” hides under the veil of progressive educators and scholars articulating a vision of creating a public school system which is equitable and just.  While these altruistic goals are highly desirable, to achieve them, one does not have to believe that simply by integrating public schools will solve all their ills.  While some research does demonstrate positive effects of school integration, and as one who went to a fairly integrated public school in Cambridge in the mid-1970s, I can attest that there is tremendous cultural and social capital gained from being raised in a diverse population.  In contrast, I also strongly believe that an all-Black, all-male, or all-Latino environment can also achieve positive academic gains for their students.  Thus the question remains whether or not we are arguing the need to dismantle the 2^nd wave or segregation based on race or class?

It is duplicitous and disingenuous to lay the “blame” on charter schools or other schools of choice as being “resegregated” when we should not only look at the racial and socio-economic make-up of the neighborhoods in which they reside, but also their academic outcomes.  Are they graduating their students and sending them to college?  Are they providing them with opportunities to engage in extra-curricular and co-curricular activities that allow them to be exposed to things that are not the “normative” behavior in their neighborhoods?  Are these students allowed to travel both around the country and the globe to see how others live?  In short, are they allowed to break out of the dominant paradigm and low expectations placed upon them because of their race, SES, gender or other bias?  We need to shift this discussion from the pervasive negative, deficit lens to one of a more positive lens. 

In short, the discourse should not focus exclusively on a schools racial disposition (although I do understand that "urban" equals less than in terms of funding), but rather how can we make ALL schools, regardless of their structures economically viable, safe, trustworthy, highly engaging, high expectations based and outcome centers of positive academic and social learning?